Not always easy!

WIth this latest newsletter we are going to try and give you a glimpse into what life looks like when trying to start a new ministry from the ground up. It is not always easy and it can be very lonely at times, but doing what God has called us to do makes it ALL worth it.  

Because we have been in language school, we start the day pretty early. It can take us anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour to go about 7 miles. We have decided that the traffic in San Jose is by far the worst, yes it is worse than Atlanta, and don't even get us started on the way they drive here. 

We have now completed 8 weeks, 120 hours, of language school. We now are able to communicate pretty well in Spanish, but we still have those days were we don't understand anything. The way the people pronounce words can be so different then how our professors do; especially the people from Nicaragua, because they don't pronounce the "s". So, it is now time to practice what we have learned with the people. 

Since arriving in Costa Rica we have been ministering to a woman and her 4 children by helping them out with food. During the last month she has asked us for a job, so she is now cleaning our house every other week. By giving the mom a job it will: 1) help keep her daughter from turning to prostitution to help the family live and 2) will help her 3 boys by not feeling that they need to get involved in gangs. Please pray for this special family.

As far as street ministry goes, we have not had a lot of time for that because of school and the fact that there have been some issues with the ministry that we have been working with. The lady that we first worked with has left and decided to start her own ministry and there seems to be a lot of struggle with these two ministries at the moment and communication has become a really big problem. We feel that God has told us it is time to step back from these ministries and to start investigating other areas of Costa Rica. Prostitution is everywhere in Costa Rica and there are areas that attracts a lot of tourists for the specific reason of 'sex tourism" so we are going to start visiting these other areas. 

October is going to be a very busy month. On October 1st we must leave the country to renew our visas. So we are heading to Nicaragua for 4 days. The timing is perfect for this since we need to practice our Spanish more with the Nicaraguan people because there are many Nicaraguan's living here and our cleaning lady is one of them. October 11 we have a small team of 4 coming from our home church. We are so excited to have them here with us and they will be traveling with us to a very poor area and pray over the land with us. Then the last week in October brings our son, Jeremiah, for a visit. 

Thank you for all of your love and prayers, because this is what has gotten us through this last month. Please pray for HIS direction as we feel that it is getting time to move away from the city, but we only want to go where HE says to go. 

Lots of love and Blessings,
John & Cindy